Teaching Labs Remotely
with Real Lab Instruments
Monday, September 16, 2013
http://wiche.edu/nanslo
Remote Science is All Around Us
Little Hercules
2000 (13 years)
Curiosity Rover
2011 (2 Year)
Hubble Telescope
1990 (23 years)
Image credit: NASA and
This Confocal Microscope
is Run by a Computer
What is the Difference Between
1m and 1000 km?
Remote Web-Based Science Lab (RWSL)—How it
works
Video
Observation
Internet
(Students)
Physical
Manipulation/
Instrument
Control
Observation
Manipulation
RWSL
Lab
Equipment
Data
Communications
Data Acquisition
5
Remote Web-Based Science Lab (RWSL)—How it
works
Cameras/JAVA/HTML
Video
Observation
Physical
Manipulation/
Instrument
Control
Observation
Manipulation
Internet
(Students)
RWSL
Lab
Equipment
Data
Communications
Data Acquisition
6
VOIP software
LabVIEW
Lab Technicians
Why do we need the RWSL?
• Online Science Courses are increasingly popular in the U.S.*
– Average of 3% growth per year from 2002 through 2011
• Online Enrollments increased from 1.6 million to 6.7 million
– Science students represented 32% of all online enrollments in 2011
(up from 10% in 2002)
*Source - I. Elaine Allen, PhD and Jeff Seaman, PhD, "Changing Course: Ten Years of Tracking Online Education in the
United States", Babson Survey Research Group and Quahog Research Group, LLC., January, 2013
• No agreed-upon standard for teaching labs online
– Many faculty think it isn’t possible to do so
– Internet is littered with failed/failing attempts
• We owe it to our students to offer authentic online science
experiences
Whom do we Currently Serve?
• Colorado Community College System
• Demographics
– The average age of our students is 28.
– 30 percent of our students are minorities.
• CCCS serves 52 percent of all minority undergraduate students in
higher education in Colorado.
– 56 percent of our students are female.
– 67% of our students are part time.
• Career and Economic Improvement
– Students see an average increase in wages of 17% after
completing a CCCS degrees/certificate program
• Forty-eight percent of the degrees/certificates awarded by CCCS are in
the health sciences.
– Health Sciences students had a 97 percent increase in earnings.
Future Plans
• Expansion of the Denver and North Island College
facilities
–
–
–
–
–
Improving procedures based on feedback
Standardization/Modularization of LabVIEW code
Additional equipment and lab procedures (2nd semester)
Access through Citrix – allows multiple platform access
Improved Scheduler - connection protocol/API
• Additional Laboratory Facility
– Great Falls College, MSU
• Networking Facilities Together
– Transactional scheduling system
• Serving other School Systems in other States/Countries
Existing Experiments and Equipment
• Physics
– Air Track
• Motion Studies (acceleration, conservation of momentum, etc.)
– Helmholtz coil
• Determine charge/mass ratio of an electron
• Chemistry
– Spectrophotometer
• Absorbance and Emission studies
• Biology
– Microscope
• Introduction to Microscopy (characterization)
• Mitosis/Meiosis
New Equipment and Experiments
• Chemistry
– Gas Chromatograph
• Chemical Identification
– Acid/Base Titration
• Biology
– Lots of microscopy (including fluorescence!)
– pH and buffering solutions
– Spectrometry flow cells
• Enzymatic activity, membrane osmosis
Microscope Comparison
Home Lab Kit ~$125
NANSLO Lab ~$58,000
THE MICROSCOPE INTERFACE
Student View 1
Student View 2
Student View 3
Student View 4
What does this do for our students?
• Gives them access to real state-of-the-art lab
equipment
• Lets them engage in authentic instrumental
experimentation.
• Allows them to collaborate with classmates
• Prepares them for a future of online science
Questions?
Dan Branan
daniel.branan@cccs.edu
PJ Bennett
paul.bennett@cccs.edu
http://wiche.edu/nanslo